


A Good Night's Sleep

by ayerlind



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Episode: s05e13 Hawk’s Nightmare, Gen, M/M, Nightmares, Protective BJ, Sleepy Cuddles, Unrequited Crush (except not), army cots are too small, based on my own actual experiences with hypervigilance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 10:57:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15839835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ayerlind/pseuds/ayerlind
Summary: Un-beta'd. Set during/slightly divergent from Hawk's Nightmare. BJ takes matters into his own hands. Or arms, more accurately.





	A Good Night's Sleep

Sidney’s visit had helped, but Hawkeye would be lying if he said he was okay.

Knowing _why_ his brain was on overdrive didn’t stop it from happening.  His dreams were still plagued, his waking hours ruined. 

He’d been a week straight without restful sleep.  Up until now, he’d thought that his sleep schedule had long since been decimated beyond repair just by virtue of being part of this bloody shit-show, and that it couldn’t possibly be worse.  He thought that he’d had enough training and experience to fight through the effect it was having on him, to keep his head on straight _now_ and deal with the bad stuff _later_.  

He was wrong - not that he could admit it until BJ had to physically kick him out of the OR.

“Go lie down,” BJ said firmly, dragging him away from the wide-eyed nurse that he had just berated for something that was definitely Hawkeye’s own fault.  Hawkeye’s tongue tripped over something that should have been an apology, but BJ caught him by the biceps, looking him right in the eyes. BJ’s (unnecessarily pretty) eyes crinkled at the corners above his surgical mask in a warm, understanding (unnecessarily pretty) smile.  “It’s okay. Go on, Hawk. Kellye can close that kid’s belly and then we only have a couple more out there. We’ll be fine.”

Hawkeye’s vision swam as he glanced at Nurse Kellye, then back.  He knew that BJ was right, and yet - “I can’t.”

“Pierce, you _have_ to sleep,” Margaret said, no-nonsense as always from a few tables over.  “For all our sakes.”

Hawkeye glared over his shoulder.  Who asked her to butt in, anyway? “I _can’t_ , but thank you for your expert advice, _Margaret_.”  He put a little extra derisive snap to the syllables of her name, not that it did anyone any good.

“Well, would it kill you to try, son?” Colonel Potter asked sharply, eyeing them from over his own patient.  His wrinkles seemed deeper, his glare darker - the heavy casualties lately had taken their toll on all of them.  “Because I’d mightily prefer that over--”

“Okay, raise your hand if you’re not helping,” BJ snapped, pulling Hawkeye’s struggling attention away from the peanut gallery.  Hawkeye reached up to wrap his hands weakly around BJ’s wrists where he was still practically holding him upright, and his itchy, heavy eyes tracked painstakingly up until he found BJ’s again.  “You’re useless in here, okay? You’ve gotta go sleep.”

“Beej,” Hawkeye interrupted desperately.  BJ didn’t understand either, damn him.

“Hawk,” BJ replied, steady as ever.  “I’ve got three bullets to dig out of that kid over there and I can’t babysit you right now.”  Words that should have made Hawkeye defensive, embarrassed, angry, but somehow BJ still managed to make them sound gentle and caring.  He deflated a little, his whole body feeling too heavy to begin to puff up in argument. “If you can’t sleep, go take a shower, maybe it’ll wake you up a little.”

More out of respect for the fact that BJ needed to work than anything, Hawkeye went.  He dragged his towel and some clean clothes from the Swamp, undressed on autopilot, and stood under the warm spray until it turned frigid, his brain lagging so badly that he’d fully washed his hair a second time before remembering it was the first thing he’d done.  He nicked himself half a dozen times while shaving, then got dressed again, all the while feeling a pounding disconnect between himself and the world around him.

As usual, BJ had been right when he’d told Hawkeye to stop operating.  For all that he thought that he had it under control, the whole world was starting to vibrate in front of his eyes.

When Hawkeye got back to the Swamp, he just... stood there for a second, getting his bearings.

“Hawkeye?”  

Shaking himself out of his stupor - Hawkeye turned to around to find BJ standing just inside the door, and he summoned something that felt like a smile.  “Oh. That was quick,” he murmured.

“Not really,” BJ said slowly, sounding somewhat concerned.  “How long have you been standing there?”

“I, um,” Hawkeye started, then he blinked.  “Showered,” he said. “Shaved...”

“Okay,” BJ said forcefully, “you have _got_ to lie down.”

Hawkeye scoffed and started to turn away, nearly tripping over his own foot.  BJ caught him gently (when had he gotten so close?) with one hand around his wrist and the other hovering up to the small of his back.  BJ started to steer him toward his cot, but Hawkeye dug in his heels.

“No,” he protested weakly, closing his eyes in frustration.  He grasped for BJ’s shirt, attempting to shake some sense into him but failing to do much more than twist his fingers into the thin pink fabric and cling on.  “I’m too scared, BJ,” he admitted, and he desperately wanted to just... collapse into BJ’s solid presence, but he just sighed. “If I sleep, something terrible happens. Every time.”

“Hawk, I may not be _your_ doctor, but I am _a_ doctor. I have the authority to say that I’m worried about you. If you don’t get some restorative sleep...”

Hawkeye could hear a note of desperation in BJ’s voice and distressed, genuinely, that he was upsetting his best friend.  But self preservation reigned, and he forced his eyes open, fighting the pull of gravity as BJ steered him to sit on the edge of his cot.

“It’s not _safe_! Staying awake is the only way to...!” Hawkeye shouted, even though shouting was an absolutely terrible idea for his throbbing head.  “Fuck,” he hissed, pulling himself back up to his feet. He ripped himself away from BJ and took a few stumbling steps over to BJ’s cot - anywhere but his own, where he’d only experienced pain recently - and he sat down heavily, deflating with a weary sigh.  

BJ followed cautiously and sank down beside him, and Hawkeye melted selfishly into the arm that wrapped around his shoulders.  “I’ll keep you safe, Hawk,” BJ said, and then, “Come here.”

As Hawkeye watched him, BJ stretched out on the cot, making a point to leave room.  Hawkeye looked from the empty space to BJ, his brow furrowed and his eyelids so fucking heavy.  Finally, hesitatingly, nervously, Hawkeye stretched out next to him until they were lying front-to-back on the flimsy excuse for a bed that the Army had gifted them with.  

“Good job,” BJ joked gently, pulling the blanket up over their lower halves.  “That was the hard part.”

Hawkeye shifted, fidgeted, refused to close his eyes, refused to let his guard down, refused to accept that this wasn’t the setup to some fucking nightmare where BJ, the object of his ridiculously inadvisable affection - handsome, wholesome, married, clean-cut, adorable, torturously faithful to his beautiful family BJ Hunnicutt - would reject and scorn and leave him after promising to protect him.

He’d had enough dreams like this - not to mention that he had a good forty-odd years of bad decisions under his belt; he knew there was no happiness to be had by following his errant thoughts down Fantasy Lane.

But BJ’s chest was pressed up against his back and BJ’s hand was rubbing gently up and down his arm and BJ’s breath was ghosting over his neck in platitudes of, ‘ _There you go_ ,’ and, ‘ _Just let yourself relax_ ’, and Hawkeye had to admit the man was probably a godsend of a father, because that gentle baritone and soft touch would be enough to tranquilize Godzilla.  “I’m not...” he murmured, forcing his eyes back open. His bitten nails dug into the flesh of his palm. “I can’t.”

“Fine, then you don’t have to,” BJ whispered, and spoken into the space where someone else might have said, ‘But you have to,’ those words were a balm to his hypervigilance.  BJ’s breath ruffled the hair at the back of Hawkeye’s neck, and he shivered, eyes closing of their own volition before he snapped himself out of it. BJ stopped only long enough to grip Hawkeye’s arm warmly, then he went back to the petting, and Hawkeye lived for the second or two that he ran out of sleeve and stroked his fingers over the back of Hawkeye’s hand.  “If you can’t sleep, then just lie here and feel safe.”

That simple phrase stole the rest of the tension from Hawkeye’s body.  Slowly his shoulders slumped, his jaw unclenched. He looked over his shoulder, expecting to see BJ’s usual smirk; instead he saw nothing but gentle, open concern and reassurance, and Hawkeye did actually feel... safe.

“Thanks,” he said, and he returned to his previously crumpled state, hiding his face against his own bicep.  “Thanks,” he murmured again. “That’s... god, that’s... what I need.”

BJ smiled and Hawkeye closed his eyes.  

He was asleep in seconds.

_He was in the OR.  It was a slow day, slow enough that he had scrubbed with BJ to be his anesthetist just out of want for something to do._

_It was one of their nurses.  It was just an appendix._

_But when BJ removed the appendix, it was a grenade; the pin stayed inside the patient._

_He had enough time to shout, “BJ!” before it went off, and suddenly his best friend in the world just ended at the pelvis._

Hawkeye jerked awake.  

“Beej?” he shouted before his eyes were even open.  He thrashed against something holding him down. Someone’s arm?  He had no memory of sleeping with anyone and was fully clothed as far as he could feel - confusion clashed with panic as he struggled awake through the thick fog of sleep.  “BJ!”

“Hawkeye. Hawk!”

His girlfriend-du-jour certainly had a gruff voice.  

Then with a rush of memory it all came back, and Hawkeye let himself collapse back into BJ’s arms, on BJ’s cot, relief swallowing him in a flash flood through his veins, and he gulped past the bile in his throat.

“You’re _okay_ .”  Throwing the whole tiny cot into rocking instability and nearly falling off, he shuffled, shimmied, scooted, and squirmed until he was flipped onto his other side, and he wrapped his arms around BJ, face pressed into BJ’s chest as his eyes burned with tears.  “Grenade!” he croaked, squeezing his eyes shut. “Fuck. There was no time for me to... you just... fuck. _Fuck_!”

“I’m right here, Hawk, look. I’m safe and so are you. Look at me.”  

Hawkeye couldn’t help himself - he wasn’t ready to open his eyes, so his hands took off without his brain, following every curve and contour of BJ’s wiry arms and broad back, making sure he was whole and warm with life, that his pulse was beating.  When he was satisfied, Hawkeye finally opened his eyes and BJ just smiled, as if what Hawkeye was doing wasn’t half-cocked and highly inappropriate.

Hawkeye eventually stilled, his hands both pressed against BJ’s chest to feel his heart beating under his shirt.  “Fuck,” he breathed again.

“I know.”  BJ pulled on Hawkeye’s arm until Hawkeye let himself be moved, eventually ending up with his head on BJ’s chest, his entire ass hanging off the cot but it was okay because BJ stroked his back and his hair and Hawkeye just concentrated on breathing as steadily as possible, burning eyes pinned to where his hand rested on BJ’s rising and falling chest.

When everything stopped racing, Hawkeye tried to work some kind of explanation past the lump that seemed permanently lodged in his throat, but could only stammer for a second before he gave up.  “Sorry,” he breathed, and if he even thought about trying to sit up, to give BJ his cot and his personal space back, BJ somehow knew it before Hawkeye did - he tightened his cuddle, one hand sliding up to card through Hawkeye’s hair, fingertips swirling idly through the soft little mohawk that always rose up at the back of his neck when his hair got too long.  

Hawkeye melted back into him and BJ said nothing, just started humming, and it wasn’t long before Hawkeye relaxed entirely against his will, the sudden absence of adrenaline dragging him into the clouds.

_He was home._

_Home._

_Well, not home, but Pemaquid Point was a hell of a lot closer than the Swamp._

_He was far, far down the granite, staring back up at the imposing structure blazing stark white against the brilliant blue of the spring sky.  The restless Atlantic crashed against the rocks to his right, sending salty spray into Hawkeye’s face._

_He was in heaven._

_Up closer to the top of the rocks, BJ was sprawled out on a dry ridge of granite.  He had no shirt, which Hawkeye appreciated, and his linen pants were rolled up to the knee, long legs crossed at the ankle._

_Hawkeye scrambled up the slippery expanse of rock until he reached BJ, nearly tripping just as he arrived to stand in front of him._

_“You look happy,” BJ said, his voice full of tenderness._

_Hawkeye leaned in to kiss him.  BJ guided him down with a hand fisted in his shirt until Hawkeye was half-kneeling, one leg alongside BJ’s lap and the other making sure he didn’t fall backwards down the glossy black slope._

_BJ’s arm snaked around his waist, fingers sliding under the hem of his shirt to brush against his bare back.  They were chest to chest, and Hawkeye crooked an arm around the back of BJ’s neck, his long fingers planting themselves solidly in BJ’s handsomely greying hair._

_“I could get used to this,” Hawkeye whispered during a warm moment they took to catch their breaths._

_“Shut up, Frank,” BJ replied._

_Hawkeye pulled back to stare at him._

_“Don’t you fucking dare, Frank, I’m warning you.”_

Hawkeye slowly began to register BJ’s voice actually speaking in the room outside the haze of his dream, not that he would have accepted any amount of money to open his eyes yet.  He was warm and drowsy, still wrapped in a protective, strong arm, buzzing from the intimacy of his dream and the little gusts of air that were tickling his ear as BJ berated Frank as quietly as possible.

“Oh, what flapdoodle! He doesn’t look very distressed to _me_ ,” Frank said snidely.  “In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that this looks like--”

“I finally got him to relax and this is the most he’s slept in over a hundred hours. If you do anything to fuck this up for him, I will reach down your throat, grab your intestines, turn you into a marionette, and sell you to the next USO show that passes through here.”

Hawkeye felt the words rumble through BJ’s chest more so than he heard them, and he smiled into BJ’s shirt as Frank stuttered nervously.  He hoped BJ wouldn’t notice, or at least that he’d not squeal on Hawkeye’s being awake - he preferred to just stay right here, pretend Frank doesn’t exist, and...

 _And he was back to kissing BJ by the water, but the water was getting closer, and way too fast.  Hawkeye had never seen the tide come in this much - by the time it was evident that they needed to move, they_ really _needed to move._

_Hand in hand, they scrambled up to the lighthouse.  It was locked, so they kept running as fast as they could through the thick mud up to the parking lot, but where there should have been pavement and cars, suddenly the terrain changed.  It was still the same sludgey spring mud, but Hawkeye just knew that they were somewhere else._

_Next to him, BJ slipped.  When Hawkeye hauled him back up to his feet, he was looking at a BJ with wide, scared eyes and less grey in his hair.  Hawkeye looked down and saw mud-caked Class A’s and shaking, blood-stained hands clasped in his own._

_“Captain Hunnicutt! The guy over there by the Jeep!” Radar yelled._

_Hawkeye flinched as a shell fell nearby, throwing himself instinctively over the body suddenly sprawled out in front of him to keep anything from falling into the wound._

_All around him people were screaming._

_When he looked down again, the body was gone._

_When he looked up, BJ was gone._

_He was alone by a river, lulled into blissful relaxation by the steady rush of water, birds singing, the rustle of leaves in the breeze that blew his hair back from his face like a soft caress._

_Hawkeye closed his eyes, sinking down to sit in the damp sand.  He sat there for what may have been hours, until he sand began to shift under him and he sank into it, sighing happily as the damp cold pressed in on him.  He sank faster and faster and he looked up at the sky._

_When the sky was gone, he finally slept._

“Attention, all personnel! Attention, all personnel! Incoming choppers!”

Hawkeye woke up with a start.  His bladder ached sharply and his head felt like it weighed a ton, but for the first time in recent memory, his eyes didn’t burn and his body didn’t hurt any more than usual.  Sitting up wasn’t a struggle that left him woozy.

“Hey,” BJ croaked, propping himself up onto an elbow on Hawkeye’s bunk a few feet away, where he’d apparently slept.  “You look a little better.”

Hawkeye bobbed his head in the affirmative, relishing the fact that such a simple movement no longer caused an entire headache, and BJ smiled one of those smiles that transformed his whole face into a beacon of happiness.  Hawkeye wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from smiling back even if he’d wanted to. “I feel better,” he said honestly. “How long did I sleep?”

“Fifteen hours. You owe me a post-op shift once you’re back on your feet.”

Halfway through pulling on his robe, Hawkeye turned to stare at him.  “Fifteen--” he started, then, “Beej, I’m so--” and finally, “I mean, you shouldn’t--”

“Hawkeye,” BJ said sternly.

Feeling heat rise to his face, Hawkeye held up his hands in surrender.  “Thank you,” he said instead, and he boldly stepped between the cots and wrapped BJ in a tight hug.

He felt a smile pressed into the side of his neck.  “You’re welcome,” BJ replied, and they shared a soft smile before dragging on their robes and stumbling out into the chaos.

 

 


End file.
